


Night Flights

by ryrrynk



Category: EXO (Band)
Genre: ChanSoo - Freeform, First Meeting, M/M, allusions to dubiously sound states of mental health, but is also a very significant plot motivator, it's really only vague, psa be wary of strangers in the woods, unless they're cute
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-07
Updated: 2018-01-07
Packaged: 2019-03-01 02:57:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,208
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13285497
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ryrrynk/pseuds/ryrrynk
Summary: He’d left his house in an effort to quell the niggling in his gut that itched for trouble, it was hardly his fault if trouble came armed with big ears and an even bigger smile.





	Night Flights

The roads were empty. It would have been strange, he thought, if they hadn’t been. It wouldn’t have served him it they hadn’t been. 

The roads were empty and the biting December air ripping through his narrowly opened windows was silent save for the pitchy hum of the car’s engine. 

He didn’t drive fast. He wasn’t in a rush, he reminded himself, he could take his time. He simply cruised down side streets and winding back roads, always just a little below the speed limit. The directions were chosen arbitrarily, in the moment. He had nowhere to be. 

Inevitably though, his subconscious mind and inherent desire to avoid any streets with the potential for other traffic at three in the morning lead him to the same stretch of rural road as always, winging down the wider street out away from edge of the city’s sprawl. 

The road forked. To the left, it curved away down to the freeway that would loop him back around to the far side of town, almost guaranteed to be vehicle-free, almost no chance of any radar traps, perfect for gunning it. To the right, the pavement faded away into hard packed dirt, single lane, divided from the main road by a grassy median, running alongside a cluster of thick trees. Nothing was down that way, only more trees, a handful of picnic benches, and a view of the creek if you took it all the way to the end.

But he was going nowhere in no real hurry. He didn’t need to gun it down a freeway and wind up back home in only a matter of minutes, as good as it might feel to go fifty over the speed limit with no one around to stop him. He’d left his house in an effort to quell the niggling in his gut that itched for trouble, but he wasn’t looking for the kind of trouble he’d run into if he hit black ice while he ran down a freeway with the pedal all the way down. Besides, he didn’t really feel like going after the sort of instant gratification of high speed night driving just then, cathartic as the rattle of his outdated suspension may be. He felt like something a little more lowkey, a little more slow-paced. He didn’t need to get himself any more keyed up than he already was by speeding. He kept to the right.

There had been a dusting of snow that afternoon. Not heavy enough to warrant a fresh round of ploughs, just enough to stick and show the clear imprints of tire tracks in his high-beams. That made him reconsider for a moment. He’d come out this far to get away from life for a while, the last thing he wanted was to wind up parked next to some handsy high school couple trying to cop a feel away from their parents’ prying eyes. The closer he inspected the tracks however, slowing down to a crawl to get a better look, the more it seemed like the same car had come and gone - two sets of matching treads. They’d probably gone home already. Not like anyone would want to camp out in a car all night with the weather turning this miserable, he figured. He pressed on. 

The road dead ended rather abruptly, the trees rising up out of the black and heading him off. He’d been down that way often enough to be ready for it though and breaked easily at the edge of the road. 

He wondered if the creek had frozen over yet. 

There was a little circle of mulch - now mostly invisible under the powdered sugar snow - clear of trees just beside the road at its end. In the warmer weather, there was a large metal fire pit and a collection of benches set up around it, but the city had long since cleared them away for the season, so there was ample room for the car on it. This point was emphasized by the treadmarks from the vehicle that had been down that way earlier clearly pressed into the snow mulch. He was glad to see he’d been right about them being well gone already. 

He could nearly see through the trees - thinner along the edge of the little clearing and naked for the season - to the creek. In the dark, though, he couldn’t really make out much. He could use the cold air anyways, he thought. He wanted to see if the creek had frozen over yet. He didn’t figure it would’ve. 

He left the car running - mostly for the headlights, partially to stop the seats from cooling down too rapidly before he had to put his ass back in them again. 

True to expectation, the water still ran largely untroubled by the reaching fingers of ice branching out from its shorelines. It would be a while still before they reached each other over the free-flowing chanel between them.

He was glad. The sound of the water running along its rocky bed, gurgling and babbling away downstream, did perhaps more to improve his mood than the chilly car ride had done. It felt like he could just tie his worries to a stone and drop it in the water, like the current would bumble them away downstream and out of sight, knock them against the rocks and sand until they came away smooth and uniform. It was fanciful and stupid, he thought wryly, but that didn’t change the sudden exhausted peace that washed over him at the sound. 

His hands were beginning to stiffen up from the cold and the skin across his face felt pinched and dry. He turned around and walked back to the car, slumping into the warmth of the heated seats and letting it seep back into his bones.

He’d left the house with the subconscious want to wander into trouble’s way - not urgent enough to chose the speeding highway route, but too present to entirely ignore - but just then he only really felt tired. He’d stopped caring about whether or not trouble found him. Maybe that was why he’d done little more than flinch and glance over in surprise when something knocked against the window of his still idling car. 

A young man’s face peered in at him, hand still raised like he was considering knocking again. Kyungsoo blinked twice, not sure he was seeing correctly. The man outside his window smiled at having successfully caught his attention and waved. Apparently he was seeing correctly. 

“Hi,” the stranger said casually, like he hadn’t just knocked on the window of an unknown vehicle in the middle of nowhere at three in the morning. The window was still open just a crack from the drive out there, just enough to let his voice through without too much muffling. 

Kyungsoo just blinked again and threw a glance at the locks. They were on. 

“Got a hot date?” the stranger asked, grinning. Kyungsoo wasn’t sure what he was grinning for, given he was standing out in the cold in a rather ridiculous looking snowsuit in the middle of the night, but that didn’t seem to stop him. Maybe, Kyungsoo thought, the guy was just a serial killer elated to find his next victim all but tripping into his clutches. He thought it seemed a little impractical for a serial killer to simply hide out in the trees in snowsuits, waiting for college kids to turn up ready to be knifed, though. 

He shook his head.

“Ah,” the stranger nodded consideringly before asking, “Dumping a body?”

This Kyungsoo couldn’t help but snort at. “A picnic site’s hardly a prime body dumping spot.” It wasn’t really, but this time of year it would be passable. It didn’t really bother Kyungsoo as much as it ought to, that thought. He probably wasn’t as thoroughly relaxed by the creek as he’d thought. 

“Oh, so you’re an expert then?” the guy laughed. 

“I could be - you never know who you’re talking to this far out of town, this late at night.”

The point was a good one and seemed to give the stranger pause. Kyungsoo wondered if perhaps that meant he was just some guy with poor foresight or a very eclectic serial killer with excellent acting skills. Either way, it wasn’t although he himself was of any threat to the stranger, the man outside the car was bent nearly entirely in half to be able to see in through the sedan’s window and the insulated gear made it difficult to gauge just how much of him was muscle, and Kyungsoo was five foot seven and spent most of his time reading comics and having existential meltdowns. Not much contest there. The stranger didn’t need to know all that though, so Kyungsoo was satisfied with the reaction.

The hesitation only lasted so long however, before the guy recovered. “You never know who you’re talking to anywhere,” he said brightly, apparently undeterred, “Until you’re introduced to them.”

This point was also a good one, if one chose to completely disregard one’s own physical safety.

“I’m Park Chanyeol,” he carried on before pausing expectantly.

“That’s nice,” Kyungsoo replied dryly. He had little interest in making friends who could very well moonlight as axe-wielding murders at the moment. That pleasant sensation of peace that had come over him only moments ago? It was dead and gone. He was well ready to go home and be rid of this chatty fellow. 

“Okay, well normally you’re supposed to introduce yourself now, but all things considered, I can probably make an exception here.”

“Is there anything in particular I can help you with?” Kyungsoo redirected, a little impatient. “Or will you stop leaning on my car so I can leave?”

Chanyeol’s face fell at that, eyes dropping sheepishly, and Kyungsoo felt a little bad for being so brusque with him before he pushed that down, remembering he was chilly and tired and breaking at least three different stranger danger rules by carrying on the conversation. 

“See, if it’s not too much trouble, I kinda wanna borrow your phone?” he said the words more like a question than anything else, looking back up at Kyungsoo hopefully. 

“What for?” Kyungsoo asked, not entirely keen on announcing the fact that he’d let his phone run down to nothing and left it on the floor somewhere near his bed. 

Chanyeol’s already wind-bitten cheeks coloured at the question. “A couple buddies said I wouldn’t last a night out here on my own, I said they could suck a dick, they dropped me off and said I could call ‘em if I wanted to bail, but turns out,” he held up his phone dejected, the illuminated screen pointed towards Kyungsoo, “I don’t get signal out here. And it’s really cold.” He didn’t wait long enough for Kyungsoo to say anything before blundering on, “You know, you don’t notice how cold it gets after a couple rounds of soju but eventually that wears off and then you feel it twice as bad, I think.” he shook his head morosely, “Have you ever tried sleeping on snow - like just on top of the snow? It’s really not comfortable and way wetter than you want it to be, lemme tell you.”

“You’d probably get enough signal to ring them if you walk back out to the main road,” Kyungsoo supplied tiredly in lieu of an actual response. He’d made a pact with himself long ago not to make a habit of bailing out idiot drunks when they sobered up and realized they’d wound up in hot water. He’d made that mistake once before and it had landed him with the noisiest, chattiest pest of a roommate he could imagine. He didn’t need another Baekhyun mooching off him for the foreseeable future - one was trouble enough. Besides, he really didn’t know what else to say. What was there to say besides no he obviously had not ever tried to sleep in the snow because he generally had enough common sense not to. 

“See, that was the plan,” the shivering idiot admitted, “but then you showed up and it’s probably windier once you get out of the trees so I figured I’d see if you had any bars before I venture out into the wilds.”

“Can’t help you there, sorry.”

“Worth a shot,” Chanyeol shrugged a little and sighed through his nose. “Thanks for not being out here to dump a body and do away with any witnesses at least.”

Kyungsoo couldn’t help but snort out a laugh “Same to you, I guess.”

“Say,” the taller man leaned back in towards the window, one forearm braced on the idling car’s roof, “I don’t wanna like, what’s the word? Impose? But would you maybe gimme a lift? Just to somewhere I can get signal?”

“The car may be blue but, I’m not a taxi service,” Kyungsoo said flatly. 

Common sense, he reminded himself. He was a person with common sense. 

“Not even to the end of the road? I can pay you if you want? C’mon man it’s really - pardon my french - really fucking cold, please?”

He was also apparently a person with a sizeable conscience made easily guilty.

Kyungsoo scrunched up his nose consideringly. He’d heard more than his fair share of hitchhiking horror stories but that little niggle in his gut that had had him grabbing his keys and taking to the streets at 3 AM in search of trouble was back and who was he to say no to an extra ten bucks just for driving back the way he was going to have to go anyways? Ten bucks was basically a whole pizza. He hadn’t had pizza in weeks. Besides, he didn’t think anyone would want to commit murder wearing a white ski coat. The stains really wouldn’t come out well and winter wear wasn’t exactly cheap after all. Common sense could take a break, for the sake of pizza money and a good deed done. 

“Just to the end of the road,” he sighed, thumbing the locks open in resignation. 

Chanyeol whooped triumphantly, but the sound was mostly muffled as he’d already turned away from the window and was shuffling around to the far side of the car, lumbering swishily in his baggy, dayglo splash pants. 

“You’re the best, man,” he declared, smiling from ear to massive ear as he shook the snow out of his hair - scattering moisture around the front seat apparently entirely oblivious to Kyungsoo’s grimace. “Literally a hero to the little people, thank you.”

Kyungsoo was tempted to point out Chanyeol was hardly one of the ‘little’ people - he had to bend awkwardly to avoid jamming his knees up against the glovebox for crying out loud - but he held his tongue in favour of backing onto the narrow dirt path. 

With no such automotive related tasks to distract him Chanyeol was entirely undeterred. 

“How old’re you anyways?” he started, still looking entirely thrilled and squirming around in his seat noisily. “Are you a student?”

“Yeah, third year,” Kyungsoo answered shortly, not taking his eyes off the winding road. 

His passenger didn’t seem at all bothered by the terse response. “Really? Me too, wow, what’re the odds? We’re probably the same age then, huh?”

“Probably not actually, I skipped a year when I was little.” He’s not particularly sure why he was bothering to share. He blamed on on the hour. The car jostled over a particularly deep pothole, rattling their teeth and Kyungsoo eased off the gas a little, forcing his shoulders to relax. They were just going to the end of the road. “You’re probably older than me.”

“Ahh,” Chanyeol nodded, grinning far too smugly for a guy bundled up like a kid on a snow day hitching a ride with a total stranger. “So I’m your hyung then.”

Kyungsoo rolled his eyes and puffed out a half-hearted laugh but didn’t bother to answer. Whatever kept his little boat afloat.

“What’re you studying then?” Chanyeol carried on easily, not bothering to let a silence big enough to require breaking to fall in the vehicle. 

“Economics.”

“Ooh, fancy. Should’ve guessed you’d have a cool-guy, serious brainy major,” Chanyeol nodded sagely. 

Kyungsoo took a moment to shoot him a quizzical look but his passenger didn’t seem to notice it and carried on without explaining the bizarre statement. 

“D’you like it?”

“Not particularly,” Kyungsoo admitted, surprising himself a little. “It’s dull and complicated, but it’s useful and it’ll get me where I wanna go so I won’t complain.”

Chanyeol hummed contemplatively and Kyungsoo wondered if maybe that would be that, if the rather strange stranger would finally let the conversation die out.

“I’m in music composition.” Apparently not. “I used to be in finance actually, but it really wasn’t my thing, you know? And I figured, what’m I gonna do with this after graduation that will make this worth it? Nothing. So I switched.”

Kyungsoo nodded, humming, as he caught sight of the street lights lining the main road starting to glow through the trees ahead. “To each their own. How’s your signal?”

Chanyeol blinked at him in apparent confusion for a long moment before hastily checking his phone. “Good! Three whole bars now.”

“Good.” Kyungsoo pulled over to the snowy curb just off the main road. “You sure your friends are gonna be awake?”

“They’d better be,” Chanyeol muttered, thumbing around on his phone for a moment before lifting it to his ear. After a long pause he whined and let his hand fall. “They promised.” He rooted around through his contacts, grumbling all the while, then tried another number. 

The cabin lights switched on as Kyungsoo knocked the gear shift into park and let his foot roll off the break. He hadn’t gotten a particularly good look at his passenger before then, in the complete darkness of the backroads. He looked entirely unthreatening when fully lit and Kyungsoo almost felt a little ridiculous for ever having seriously conceived he could possibly be a serial killer. Sure, looks could be deceiving, but he had the most earnest looking features Kyungsoo could ever recall seeing on a person and his increasingly despairing pout made him look more like a lost child than a nefarious fiend. The only remotely startling things about him were his height and the shockingly bright shade of red he’d dyed his hair, which had been easily mistaken for a dark brown in the earlier dark.

The subject of his study scrunched up his face and made another noise of dismay. Call number two didn’t appear to be any more successful, if the increase in squirming and whining was any indication. 

“You live in town?” Kyungsoo pointed in the general direction of the freeway, not really sure what he was doing. Chanyeol nodded glumly. “That’s kind of a long walk from here.” He nodded again.

Common sense, Kyungsoo, he thought to himself with a weakened sort of resolve. It really was pretty cold to be staying out for the rest of the night and walking down the edge of the sloppily plowed, wind-tunnel of a freeway all the way back to town in the dark was hardly the safest plan Kyungsoo could conceive of. What the hell. Fuck common sense, he was getting pizza money and a story and a half to hit Baekhyun with in the morning if he wasn’t somehow lured into some nefarious and cleverly laid trap or other by the benevolent man-child he’d allowed into his vehicle first. Anyways, he’d gone out that morning looking for trouble and it could hardly be his fault for taking the plunge if trouble came armed with big ears and an even bigger smile.

“I’m going that way anyways, it’ll only be like half an hour until buses start running again by the time we get there. I can drop you at the purple/brown terminal if you can’t get ahold of anybody.”

Chanyeol’s returning grin was blinding. 

“You really are the best, oh man,” he chirped. “I’ll try ‘Dae again, but if he still doesn’t answer that’d be bomb of you.”

Kyungsoo wondered if there was some sort of Arts Major code of conduct that dictated he talk like that. He’d have to ask Baekhyun later - when he was home from taxing over-talkative stranger around and his roommate was done sleeping off the inevitable hangover he’d no doubt have come home with from whatever social function he’d been off at until shortly before Kyungsoo had left. Because, honestly, who even said something ‘would be bomb’ in this century? 

Apparently Chanyeol’s supposed buddies - or ex-buddies, as he declared he was no longer trusting them to be his best mates after this untimely betrayal - were all still soundly asleep. They’d probably been as drunk as he’d been when he’d agreed to camp out in the brush with nothing but a ski jacket and splash pants - with the hopeful, but not entirely reliable, exception of whoever had driven him out there - and weren’t going to be waking up any time soon. 

Much to Chanyeol’s chagrin, he didn’t seem to be off in his assumption.

“I’m really sorry to ask, but like-”

“I already offered,” Kyungsoo dismissed, pressing down on the back and shifting back into drive. “It’s fine, really. I’ve gotta go that way anyways. Just do up your seatbelt.”

“Thanks, this’s really cool of you,” Chanyeol was saying before they’d even gotten fully situated on the freeway, unzipping his jacket and fluffing it around noisily to get more comfortable. Kyungsoo took his time getting up to speed. There were no other drivers to worry about and he wasn’t about to waste that rare freedom to slowly roll up from a neutral cruise to a faster than advisable highway speed as gradually as he liked. The constant chatter from the passenger seat did something to detract from the usual joys of legally compromising driving though. “Like, I don’t think most people would let some guy get in their car in the woods and drive them around - not that I’m saying you have anything to worry about or anything,” he added hastily, “Or like make bad choices or whatever,” he tacked on, visibly wracking his brain for anything he could say to avoid offending his newly procured chauffeur. Kyungsoo watched him out of the corner of his eye and bit back a laugh. “Just that like, you’re really nice, helping a stranger out like this, and uh…”

“I’ve got a good judge of character, how ‘bout that?” Kyungsoo supplied, mostly joking, but also hoping to alleviate the other’s sudden distress, turning his focus back to the road and pressing down on the gas a little harder. There was still no rush, but he would rather focus on driving than conversation and the added speed gave him an excuse.

“Yeah!” Chanyeol exhaled gratefully, nodding, no apparent regard for the lack of direct attention he was receiving. “A good judge of character. You’ve got a natural knack from separating the wheat from the chaff - or like, the dumb university kid from the rural organ harvester in this case.”

“You make the difference easy to spot.”

“Oh?”

“I’ve never met an organ harvester out in the woods at three in the morning wearing yellow and orange polkadot splash pants.”

Chanyeol looked down at himself abruptly, like his atrocious outerwear choices were news to him.

“It’s hard to find pants long enough, my options are limited,” he protested earnestly. “It was either this or brown and green and those ones were tacky and boring.” 

Kyungsoo rolled his eyes at that but kept quiet and kept his attention out the windscreen resolutely. He glanced down at the speedometer and let up on the gas. No rush. He certainly didn’t have a curfew and Chanyeol was really in no risk of missing the first bus. Why hurry? The faster they got back into the city limits, the sooner Kyungsoo would get to sleep, sure. But the faster he drove, the longer Chanyeol would have to stand around at the terminal on his own and the sooner the car would be quiet, save for the winter air whistling in through the cracked open window again. 

“I’m not being distracting am I?” Chanyeol asked, though he sounded more or less entirely unrepentant. “I know I can get kind of loud and stuff but I’ve not been too loud, right?”

“No,” Kyungsoo shook his head, “But I also have experience with quite possibly the world’s most disruptive roommate. I’m pretty good at ignoring loud noise when I don’t wanna hear it.”

“Wow, I didn’t know we were roommates,” Chanyeol laughed at his own joke, but only received a side-long look from Kyungsoo for his efforts. “Ah, does that mean you’re gonna ignore me? How mean, really.” He was pouting, Kyungsoo could tell without having to look at him, but he didn’t really sound all that put out so he left it at that and waited for Chanyeol to start back up and fill the silence before it really had a chance to settle in. He wasn’t kept waiting long.

The ride the rest of the way into town wasn’t a particularly long one, really. It helped that Kyungsoo’s take on the speed limit was still a little liberal, but really, not as liberal as it could have been - certainly not as liberal as it normally was. But it also helped that Chanyeol didn’t let the car fall into a silence that lasted longer than about three seconds and each new topic he drew on was a little wilder than the last. He would stop occasionally and quiz Kyungsoo on what he’d just been saying like he’d really been expecting him to start tuning out his stories, but Kyungsoo answered each question easily. He was tempted to remind Chanyeol he only ignored things he didn’t feel like listening to, and thusly he had no real reason to worry, but the little sounds of a approval the taller boy made every time Kyungsoo gave him the right answer were silly and endearing and he really didn’t mind the audience participation much anyways.

Chanyeol was just regaling him with a tale about the time in his senior year of high school his friends had stolen his ferret to feature in their entire grade’s set of graduation photos for the yearbook when they rolled into the parking lot of the bus terminal. 

“I guess this is the end of the line, huh?” he said, still a little breathless from laughing at the memory, zipping his jacket back up. 

Kyungsoo had said he’d take him as far as the terminal. He hadn’t made any promises to stick around and wait for the bus to show up, or to prolong his impromptu taxi service any further. He could boot this guy out of his car here and now, no sense of guilt or obligation left to fester in, and go home and go to bed, just like he’d planned, with only a minor detour. That was what common sense said he ought to do.

But he’d been ignoring the clearly outlined principles of common sense all night and Kyungsoo really wasn’t tired anymore and, besides, what was an extra twenty minutes at that point?

“It’s still like forty five minutes before buses start running,” he pointed out with a glance down at the little glowing clock set into the dash. “You want me to just give you a lift the rest of the way?”

Chanyeol looked a little hesitant, hand already resting on the door. “Ah, really? Are you sure? I don’t wanna be any trouble.”

Trouble? Kyungsoo thought dryly, looking at him. He was practically the definition of the word as far as Kyungsoo was concerned at that point. Or maybe Kyungsoo was just projecting. After all, it did seem rather troublesome to chauffeur a stranger over hill and dale, didn’t it?

“I can drop you somewhere within walking distance of your place if you’d rather not give a stranger your address, but that way you could actually maybe get home before sunup.”

“But then you’d-”

“I wouldn’t offer if I didn’t mean it,” Kyungsoo interrupted with a wave of his hand. “If you’d rather the bus, just say so - I don’t really care,” somehow, he felt like that wasn’t as true as he wanted it to be, but that thought was so absurd he chalked it up to a combination of sleep deprivation and Baekhyun having spent most of the week out of the house, which meant - due to his hermit-like nature - Kyungsoo had been more or less isolated from society. It honestly probably had nothing to do with Chanyeol easy breezy jokes or goofy stories. He’d known the guy for barely an hour and he’d go home after this and fall straight back into his usual recluse ways, no muss no fuss. It really didn’t matter if Chanyeol got out of the car there or on the other side of town. “but the offer stands.”

“Okay, if you’re sure,” Chanyeol agreed, still looking apprehensive, like he was imposing somehow, but he settled back into his seat and unzipped his jacket again anyways. “You know the fruit market up by the four corners?” he paused until Kyungsoo nodded, “Just there’d be good, I’m just a little farther up than that.”

“Alright.”

They pulled off the curb and rolled on down the early morning street, heading North. 

Chanyeol finally started showing signs of running out of energy about halfway between the terminal and the fruit market. Yawns began to punctuate his sentences almost as often as his sweeping hand gestures and he allowed Kyungsoo’s short responses to hang in the air unanswered longer and longer with each pause. 

Kyungsoo shot amused glances at him as he scrubbed at his eyes and fought to stay focused, but really, he was starting to feel the hour himself. He was glad they were heading in the same direction he lived in, he’d have felt pretty foolish if Chanyeol turned out to live way out in the boonies and he’d wound up too tired to safely drive home after dropping him off. He wasn’t particularly keen on sleeping in the back of his car on the side of the road. Maybe, he noted dryly, sometimes common sense was something he ought to listen to, rather than leave everything up to rashly made decisions.

As a rule, Kyungsoo was more used to quiet in the car than conversation so didn’t actually notice his passenger had fallen asleep until he was pulling into the fruit market’s drive. The cabin lights blinked back on as he knocked the car back into park. 

“Chanyeol?” he called quietly, feeling strangely reluctant to raise his voice and wake him. The taller boy was slouched forward, chin resting on his chest just above his folded arms, and snoring softly. Kyungsoo tried his name again, a little louder. This was only met with a half-hearted grumble of protest and some discontented wriggling as Chanyeol tried to settled further into the seat. “Hey,” Kyungsoo reached over to lightly press at his arm. He probably couldn’t even really feel the touch through the insulated jacket. “We’re at the fruit market. I don’t have your address, you have to wake up.”

Chanyeol’s bottom lip jutted out, brows furrowing, in one last futile attempt at protestation, but he was clearly awake enough to be bothered by the bright light only a few inches away from his head and it was just a matter of time and groggy muttering before he was mostly cogent again.

“Sorry, wow,” he said around a yawn, clicking his seatbelt off. Kyungsoo tried to fight back his own reflex but couldn’t stifle the yawn Chanyeol’s had triggered. “I didn’t mean to fall asleep, thanks for driving me, man, that was really cool of you, if you gimme your email I can transfer you like - I dunno, how much is gas these days?” Another yawn. He scrubbed at his eyes blearily and fumbled around for his jacket’s zipper. His attempts to fasten it completely failed - the pull shooting up is own runner and missing the other side of the zip altogether. He made no move to try again, settling instead for just pulling the fabric tighter around him and squinting against the light. “Whatever, I can pay you back, anyways, for like whatever the gas for that would’ve been.”

He dug around on the seat under his leg for his phone and held it out to Kyungsoo without remembering to unlock it. When Kyungsoo didn’t immediately take it from him, he wiggled it around near the shorter man’s face encouragingly. 

Rather than address the locked phone twirling around centimeters from the end of his nose, Kyungsoo looked up at Chanyeol and asked: “Are you sure you’re good to walk?” 

“Yeah, I’m good, I’m good, it’s just like,” he pointed with the hand that had been in Kyungsoo’s face, bumping his phone off the windscreen in the process and wincing a little without retracting his hand. “Five minutes up that way.”

Kyungsoo peered up the road. His own house was barely five blocks up and over that way. He’d feel like a bit of an asshole kicking Chanyeol out of his car and taking off in the exact direction the guy was going to be walking in - especially when he was still squinting like it took efforts of a herculean proportion to keep his eyes open. 

“Which street?” Kyungsoo asked, putting the car back into drive with a sigh. 

“What?” 

“Seatbelt,” Kyungsoo reminded, gesturing at him with his elbow. When he heard the buckle fasten he asked again, “Which street are you on?”

“Oh,” Chanyeol said dumbly. “This one. Just a couple blocks up, on the right.”

Kyungsoo squinted against the dim light of the suburban streets and made no direct reply. Chanyeol didn’t repeat himself, though, so it didn’t seem like he needed to. 

“Just here, second building, the grey one,” Chanyeol was pointing through the windscreen again, this time his fingertip poking against it and leaving behind a trio of smudgy prints. “Here, here.”

The car rolled to a stop just at the end of the drive. It was a stack of what looked like either four large apartments or six small ones, all the lights off. It was hard to make out many details in the dark, but the edges of the sky were beginning to warm with the not-so-distant approach of the dawn. If he loitered there another hour it’d be nearly full light.

“So like, do you wanna gimme your info or?” Chanyeol started, pulling Kyungsoo’s attention back inside the vehicle. He’d forgotten Chanyeol had offered to pay him for a moment and had been a bit startled by the question. Then he remembered and the sudden-onset-fluster he’d been hit with fell away almost as fast as it had come on.

“Sure,” Kyungsoo accepted the phone - this time unlocked and open to a new memo - and typed out his email. It wasn’t like strangers could do much to him with just his email and he’d already ferried this guy all across hell’s half acre in the middle of the night so he really didn’t see the harm. “Just shoot me like five bucks. Or don’t honestly. I was going this way anyways. I live in the area, so really, it was no skin off my nose.”

“Yeah?” Chanyeol’s most recent attempt at wrangling his jacket’s zip seemed to be more successful than his last, but he did catch his chin in the collar and whined in complaint. “I guess I’ll maybe see you around or something then, yeah?”

“Maybe,” Kyungsoo said, more than a little dubious as he thought about the number of evenings he spent holed up in his own room trying to avoid Baekhyun’s scheming and busybody social affairs. 

“Cool,” Chanyeol said around another yawn, “Thanks again, man, seriously.”

“It was no problem. Get inside safely,” Kyungsoo dismissed, wishing absently he didn’t sound so stiff whenever he was thanked for something. Compared to Chanyeol’s easy delivery of the near dozen ‘thank you’s over the course of the night, his awkwardness felt starkly highlighted. 

Nodding, apparently entirely unbothered, the tall boy pushed the passenger door open and clambered out onto the curb gracelessly. “Okay, thanks.”

A light came on in one of the units - the uppermost right window - and almost in the same instant, Chanyeol’s phone lit up in his hand.

He snorted out a disbelieving laugh. “That’d be Jongdae realizing he left my ass to freeze. I should probably get inside before he goes into cardiac arrest or something. Good night! Drive careful!” 

“Yeah, you too.”

Chanyeol waved with the hand holding his phone and swung the door shut before Kyungsoo had a chance to bumble through an awkward clarification that he’d meant you have a good night too, not you drive carefully too. 

Kyungsoo lingered on the curb long enough to see him answer the incoming call while he unlocked the front door before he shifted the car back into drive and headed for home, his familiar thirst for late night misadventure finally properly quelled.

**Author's Note:**

> thank u for reading!!  
> i wrote this with very little long term plot planning but i have vague thoughts for how i should like to continue this if ever i do. for now though, i'm going to leave this as a stand alone. it mostly just started as a little venty thing and grew from there - idek how i really feel about it lmao. but pls let me know what u think if u want to!


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